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In March 2003 the United States led a coalition to topple Saddam Hussein's regime believing Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). We now know that the regime secretly destroyed their WMD in the summer of 1991 and disbanded these programs shortly thereafter. Surprisingly, Iraqi officials acted as if they had something to hide after the regime destroyed these weapons. Why did the Iraqi regime behave in such an incriminating manner at the risk of their own survival? This lecture examines new primary sources to explain Iraqi signals and behavior between 1991 and 2003.

Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She is the author of Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Cornell University Press, 2016). She is a former fellow (pre-doctoral, post-doctoral and junior faculty fellow) at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University. Her work has been published in International Security, The Nonproliferation Review, The Middle East Journal, Huffington Post, International Herald Tribune and New York Times (online edition). Her doctoral dissertation "Nuclear Entrepreneurs: Drivers of Nuclear Proliferation" (London School of Economics, 2010) received the British International Studies Association Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize for 2010.